Hope, temperated by 4 years of reality, endures

Richard S. Dunham

Updated 4:06 pm, Thursday, January 24, 2013

NAACP Greater Bridgeport Branch President Carolyn Vermont, who will be attending the Obama inauguration on January 21, holds a Washington newspaper from his first inauguration that she attended in 2009, at ABCD in Bridgeport on Thursday, January 17, 2013.
Photo: Brian A. Pounds

Fueled by inspirational talk of "hope" and "change," they were part of the diverse tapestry of 1.2 million Americans who descended on the nation's capital to celebrate the inauguration of the first person with African roots ever to serve as president of the United States.

"Everybody was happy and smiling," recalls Vermont, the NAACP president for the Greater Bridgeport branch. "Strangers were hugging each other. It just felt like one huge, huge family reunion."

That was then. Now, after the first four years of the Obama presidency, where has the hope and change gone?

Polls show that most Americans embrace the president as a person. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed that he had a personal approval rating of 74 percent. Sixty-one percent call him easy-going and likeable.

But hope and change only go so far. Just 28 percent of Americans say that Obama has succeeded in changing Washington. And just 47 percent approve of the policy changes he's bringing to the country, while 49 percent dissent.

On the eve of Obama's second term, the nation remains divided: 43 percent are optimistic about the next four years, according to the NBC/Journal poll, while 35 percent are pessimistic and 22 percent express mixed feelings.

"We are certainly more divided than we were in 2009, at Obama's last inaugural," said political scientist Steven E. Schier of Carleton College. "The divides between the parties are greater than ever. Obama has governed much of the time in a partisan fashion, exacerbating the situation."

All the talk of hyper-partisanship can't dampen Kenya Wheeler's excitement. The community organizer and city planner from the San Francisco Bay Area is returning to the place where, four years ago, he started dating Ruby Reid, the woman who later became his wife.

"We danced together at the Neighborhood & Staff Balls," he recalls. "I still have the photos on my computer."

Friday, Wheeler boarded a jet at Oakland International Airport to join his wife in Washington and relive "the magic of 2009 and the excitement of President Obama's second term."

Among Obama's core supporters, much of the enthusiasm remains -- although it has been tempered by the hard realities of Washington gridlock and partisan game-playing.

"Their expectations are lowered," said George C. Edwards III, a political scientist from Texas A&M University. "They are chastened. They are exhilarated that the president won, but they have things they need the president to do."

Carolyn Vermont will be back in Washington to see the nation's first African American president be sworn in for a second term on Monday. After four difficult years of partisan divisions, major victories and costly setbacks, she remains hopeful that Obama is changing America for the better.

"If anything, I'm even more overjoyed to see that America has selected him for a second term," said Vermont. "The American people see how hard he's working and the opposition he is facing."

After all, he got Osama bin Laden. And, at a very high cost, he won passage of the 2010 health-overhaul law known as Obamacare.

As he prepares to be sworn in again by Chief Justice John Roberts, the 44th president is significantly grayer. Republicans now control half of Capitol Hill.

His support has frayed a bit -- but the history-making coalition held together to deliver another Electoral College landslide on Nov. 6, 2012. His percentage of the popular vote declined from 52.9 percent to 51 percent.

One of the votes he lost was Samantha Zarrini's. Four years ago, as a 19-year-old sophomore at American University in Washington, D.C., Zarrini attended the inauguration filled with hope and optimism.

"His campaign at the time was built on a lot of excitement," Zarrini said Thursday. "We felt, as students, we helped to carry the election and the message of hope and change."

But Zarrini said she discovered during Obama's first term that "you realize things are a lot harder than what they made it out to be."

When Zarrini graduated from college two years ago, she couldn't find a job.

"It was like someone splashed cold water in my face," she said. "Reality had set in."

Returning home to Danbury, Conn., she felt she could not vote for Obama again. Unable to support Republican Mitt Romney, she opted for Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson.

"I'm a lot more realistic now," she said. "You can't fix the world in four years. I can't say I have that same sense of hope I had four years ago. This time around, I am much more cautious and realistic."

Zarrini still agrees with Obama on many issues, but she parts ways when it comes to the federal budget and debt.

"I still align myself with him on social issues, but I didn't agree with him when it came to fiscal policies," she said. "That's where the hope and change combusted for me."

While Zarrini will remain in Connecticut on Monday, Vermont will return to Washington, more convinced than ever that Obama's ultimate success depends on people like her.

"The next four years will depend on all of us," she said. "The president needs our support."